


An Awful Lot of Meat for a Vegetarian Restaurant

by SweetLateJuliet



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-14
Updated: 2014-02-24
Packaged: 2018-01-12 07:48:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1183733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetLateJuliet/pseuds/SweetLateJuliet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If John and Sherlock ever have a BBC-canonical sexual relationship, that slavering hound of Baskerville is going to look <i>so</i> cheeky.</p><p>It's a thought experiment, not a promise about what will happen. (Though if you give me wine and ask what I really think...)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

If John and Sherlock ever have a BBC-canonical sexual relationship, that slavering hound of Baskerville is going to look  _so_ cheeky.

And you might cry for Henry Knight like I just did.

To be clear, I’m not presenting  _evidence_ that something _will_ happen in the future (Johnlock). I’m doing a  _thought experiment_ about how what we already have (THoB) will look  _if_ Johnlock happens.

… And if you don’t have to squint very hard to make it look like evidence, well, you’ll just have to talk to Gatiss about that. He’s got writer credit for THoB.

In THoB, gay couple Gary and Billy run the Cross Keys Inn, which is prominently advertised as vegetarian.

You wouldn’t expect there to be meat at this nice vegetarian establishment.

But there is! (Is that an early-model meat dagger?) The Meat sustains Gary and Billy’s Secret Hound, in which the public is Very Interested.

You see where I’m going with this? For the sake of this experiment, when you see “meat” or “hound,” think “signs of gay sex and gay romance.” Since we’re imagining ourselves in a future where Johnlock has become canon, think about how this episode comments on John’s, Sherlock’s, and your experience until it became so.  


John first suspects Something’s Going On at the inn because of the evidence of So Much Meat. ( **Quotes are from[callie-ariane](http://tmblr.co/muvrsK5zeKNWKRSF7ZNk5vA)'s [transcript](http://arianedevere.livejournal.com/28352.html). Bless her! ** Re-read the whole thing to see how this thought experiment plays across the entire episode.)

> JOHN: Well, I’ve not been idle, Sherlock.  _(He rummages in his trouser pocket.)_ I think I might have found something.
> 
> _(He shows Sherlock the sales invoice from Undershaw Meat Supplies which he stole off the bar while he was checking in.)_
> 
> JOHN: Here. Didn’t know if it was relevant; starting to look like it might be. That is an awful lot of meat for a vegetarian restaurant.
> 
> SHERLOCK: Excellent.

(Canon nod: Undershaw is the name of one of ACD’s houses, and where he wrote “The Hound of the Baskervilles.”)

Sherlock and John put Lestrade on the case of the Meat-Where-It’s-Not-Expected, and Lestrade starts examining the evidence.

> LESTRADE: Is that when you had the idea, after the TV show went out?

~~John~~ Billy, Gary-the-manager’s short partner, offers an Explanation of the Evidence. Lestrade doesn’t buy it.

> BILLY: It’s me. It was me.  _(He turns to his partner.)_ I’m sorry, Gary – I couldn’t help it. I had a bacon sandwich at Cal’s wedding and one thing just led to another …
> 
> _(Sherlock grins behind him. Greg is equally disbelieving.)_
> 
> LESTRADE: Nice try.

(One thing led to another! Billy didn’t mean to! No hound!)

Gary says the myth of the hound was a way to generate media attention, but they lost control of it, so Billy had it put down. (Actually, Gary, Billy, and Lestrade use exaggerations [monster, Hound of Hell] when they’re talking about how others view the creature, and “dog” when they’re voicing their own views. It’s not substantively different from a “regular dog” for them, bless them all.)

> GARY: Look, we were just trying to give things a bit of a boost, you know? A great big dog run wild up on the moor – it was heaven-sent. It was like us having our own Loch Ness Monster.
> 
> LESTRADE: Where do you keep it?
> 
> GARY: There’s an old mineshaft. It’s not too far. It was all right there.
> 
> SHERLOCK: “Was”?
> 
> GARY  _(sighing)_ : We couldn’t control the bloody thing. It was vicious.  _(He sighs again.)_ And then, a month ago, Billy took him to the vet and, er … you know.
> 
> JOHN: It’s dead?
> 
> GARY: Put down.
> 
> BILLY: Yeah. No choice. So it’s over.
> 
> GARY: It was just a joke, you know?

Admire the subtlety of language with me: “It’s dead?” The answer is not “yes.” The answer is a euphemism, “put down,” like quashing a rumor. They had no choice. It was just a joke, you know? They ended it a month ago. (You know, back when Sherlock was busy with Irene.)

Lestrade chastises them for the stress they caused to someone (Henry Knight) who had  _actually seen the hound_ .

> LESTRADE: You’ve nearly driven a man out of his mind.

Sherlock believes - well, doesn’t disbelieve - this Story about the hound From Its Owners. Lestrade hopes the deception was harmless, and thinks it at least wasn’t criminal.

> LESTRADE: So, you believe him about having the dog destroyed?
> 
> SHERLOCK: No reason not to.
> 
> LESTRADE: Well, hopefully there’s no harm done. Not quite sure what I’d charge him with anyway. I’ll have a word with the local Force.

But Gary was lying (oh you LLWL, Gary), and the hound is still very much alive. In fact, Sherlock has Already Seen the terrifying thing with Henry Knight, even though he denies it to everyone but John. (John wasn’t with Henry and Sherlock when the hound appeared because he’d Fallen Behind and was busy Misunderstanding Signals, the “Morse code” of the headlights on the moor.)

> HENRY: We saw it. We  _saw_ it.
> 
> SHERLOCK: No. I didn’t see anything.
> 
> HENRY  _(chasing after him)_ : What? What are you talking about?
> 
> SHERLOCK: I didn’t. See. Anything.
> 
> …
> 
> HENRY: This is good news, John. It’s-it’s-it’s good. I’m not crazy. There  _is_ a hound, there … there  _is_ . And Sherlock – he saw it too. No matter what he said, he saw it.
> 
> …
> 
> SHERLOCK: Henry’s right.
> 
> JOHN: What?
> 
> SHERLOCK  _(his voice shaking)_ : I saw it too.
> 
> JOHN  _(shocked)_ : What?
> 
> SHERLOCK: I saw it too, John.

Sherlock is afraid of the hound because it Made His Body Betray Him with emotions.

> SHERLOCK: Look at me. I’m afraid, John. Afraid.
> 
> _(He takes a drink and then holds the glass up again, his hand still shaking.)_
> 
> JOHN: Sherlock?
> 
> SHERLOCK: Always been able to keep myself distant …  _(he takes another drink from the glass)_ … divorce myself from … feelings. But look, you see …
> 
> _(He holds up the glass and glares at his shaking hand.)_
> 
> SHERLOCK: … body’s betraying me. Interesting, yes? Emotions.  _(He slams the glass down onto the table.)_ The grit on the lens, the fly in the ointment.

John tells Sherlock to take it easy and suggests that Sherlock’s worked up over the hound. (And calls him Spock. You know, that emotionless half of the TV pairing people love to slash.) Sherlock gets angry, shouts  _THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH ME!_ , and proceeds to prove to John that he can deduce just as well as ever Even Though the hound has made him Feel Something.

The conversation ends unpleasantly, with Sherlock pushing John away in spite of their friendship because John Cannot Understand.

> SHERLOCK: … I use my senses, John, unlike  _some_ people, so you see, I  _am_ fine, in fact I’ve never been better, so just  _Leave. Me. Alone._
> 
> _(He glares at John, who stares back at him in shock.)_
> 
> JOHN: Yeah.
> 
> _(He clears his throat.)_
> 
> JOHN: Okay. Okay.
> 
> _(Distressed by his colleague’s venom, he tries to settle back in his chair as Sherlock stares towards the fire, breathing heavily.)_
> 
> JOHN: And why would you listen to me? I’m just your friend.
> 
> SHERLOCK  _(savagely)_ : I don’t have friends.
> 
> JOHN  _(softly)_ : Naah. Wonder why?
> 
> _(He gets up and walks away.)_

The next morning, Sherlock apologizes to John by explaining the Uniqueness of the Experience, and of John, and the Doubt. (“About last night…”)  


> _(Sherlock looks at John’s retreating back, his face full of pain.)_
> 
> SHERLOCK: John …
> 
> JOHN: It’s fine.
> 
> SHERLOCK: No, wait. What happened last night … Something happened to me; something I’ve not really experienced before …
> 
> JOHN: Yes, you said: fear. Sherlock Holmes got scared. You said.
> 
> _(Sherlock catches him up, takes hold of his arm and pulls him round to face him.)_
> 
> SHERLOCK: No-no-no, it was more than that, John. It was doubt. I felt doubt. I’ve  _always_ been able to trust my senses, the evidence of my own eyes, until last night.
> 
> JOHN: You can’t actually believe that you saw some kind of monster.
> 
> SHERLOCK: No, I  _can’t_ believe that.  _(He grins bitterly for a moment.)_ But I did see it, so the question is: how?  _How?_
> 
> JOHN: Yes. Yeah, right, good. So you’ve got something to go on, then? Good luck with that.
> 
> _(He turns and starts to walk away again. Sherlock turns and calls after him.)_
> 
> SHERLOCK: Listen, what I said before, John. I meant it.
> 
> _(John stops and turns back to face him.)_
> 
> SHERLOCK: I don’t have friends.
> 
> _(He bites his lip briefly.)_
> 
> SHERLOCK: I’ve just got  one.

Later, they go looking for the hound together at Baskerville. Major Barrymore, who turns out to be responsible for the hallucinogens, scoffs at Sherlock as being “one of the conspiracy lot.” (Oh, those nutters who see things where they’re not…)  


… _Major Barrymore_. *snort* Quick detour to an [annejamison](http://tmblr.co/mitoVCXG9xjlMPSnGorxRug) [post](http://annejamison.tumblr.com/post/75080601852/my-conversation-with-the-millions-elizabeth-minkel):

> Of course you also get Wilde writing a brilliant play about double lives with the name “Bunbury” as the signifier. If you get the joke, it’s there for you, but getting the joke also implicates you. If not? Funny heterosexual romantic comedy.
> 
> The one thing you couldn’t have, though, was any kind of mainstream narrative that included any actual reference to men committing homosexual acts. No actual burying anything in buns.

(The name “Barrymore” comes from the original ACD. “Major” is new.)

Ever logical, Sherlock conducts an experiment to find out How John Will React to the hound. Result: terror. And, it was exactly As Scary As John Was Told It Would Be.

> SHERLOCK: I made up the bit about glowing. You saw what you expected to see because I  _told_ you.

Then off they go to put the specter to rest. Sherlock examines the sugar for the source of their delusion, since it must be the reason John Didn’t See It.

> SHERLOCK: The sugar, yes. It’s a simple process of elimination. I saw the hound – saw it as my imagination expected me to see it: a genetically engineered monster. But I knew I couldn’t believe the evidence of my own eyes, so there were seven possible reasons for it, the most possible being narcotics. Henry Knight – he saw it too but you didn’t, John. You didn’t see it.

Sherlock discovers the true meaning of the HOUND project (a chemical weapon based on fear and stimulus). Meanwhile, Henry Knight has lashed out at his therapist after beginning to remember the truth and gone to the moor with a gun. Sherlock, John and Lestrade go after him.

Henry wants to kill himself because of What He Is, which Sherlock says was framed by Someone Else’s Dream for him. (Warning: This scene is a lot more painful through the lens of this thought experiment.)

> HENRY  _(softly)_ : I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Dad.
> 
> _(Squatting down, he brings the pistol up and opens his mouth as he aims the muzzle towards it.)_
> 
> SHERLOCK: No, Henry, no! No!
> 
> _(He and John scramble down the slope, shining their torches at him. Henry stands up and stumbles backwards, waving the pistol vaguely in their direction. His voice is high-pitched and hysterical.)_
> 
> HENRY: Get back. Get – get away from me!
> 
> JOHN: Easy, Henry. Easy. Just relax.
> 
> HENRY: I know what I am. I know what I tried to do!
> 
> JOHN: Just put the gun down. It’s okay.
> 
> HENRY  _(his voice hoarse with anguish)_ : No, no, I know what I am!
> 
> SHERLOCK  _(as reassuring as he’ll ever sound)_ : Yes, I’m sure you do, Henry. It’s all been explained to you, hasn’t it – explained  _very_ carefully.
> 
> HENRY: What?
> 
> SHERLOCK: Someone needed to keep you quiet; needed to keep you as a child to reassert the dream that you’d both clung on to, because you had started to remember.

Both Frankland (the father-figure who misled Henry) and the hound show up while Sherlock, John, Lestrade and Henry are being dosed with the fear fog. Urged on by Frankland, Lestrade shoots at the scary hound three times but can’t hit it. As it leaps to attack, John shoots it dead. Sherlock forces Henry to really look at it, and Henry turns on Frankland:

> HENRY: Twenty years! Twenty years of my life making no sense! Why didn’t you just kill me?!

Moment of silence for Henry’s awful experience.

Sherlock, who at this point still has some emotional development to do, thanks Henry for the brilliant case.

The episode ends with Billy bringing John “whatever is the vegetarian equivalent of a full English breakfast” (callie-ariane’s words, and that’s what he wants, right? no meat?) and Sherlock bringing a hot beverage of friendship.

> SHERLOCK: So they didn’t have it put down, then – the dog.
> 
> JOHN  _(tucking into his breakfast as Sherlock stands next to him and drinks his coffee)_ : Obviously. Suppose they just couldn’t bring themselves to do it.
> 
> SHERLOCK: I see.
> 
> JOHN  _(smiling)_ : No you don’t.
> 
> SHERLOCK: No, I don’t. Sentiment?
> 
> JOHN: Sentiment!
> 
> SHERLOCK  _(rolling his eyes)_ : Oh.

John and Sherlock now understand that Billy and Gary didn’t put down their publicity-generating dog; they cared too much about it. John killed it at this point in his character arc because he’d been poisoned by fear and told it was a monster.

And _we_ now know that the hound was real all along, but not so scary or dangerous as some would have us believe.  


~~~

An interesting coda to this thought experiment:

Bear with me; this is a little squirrelly. I’m not saying that CAM imagines a homoerotic subtext to Baskerville and considers that a pressure point. I’m saying that for us (our hypothetical looking-back-after-Johnlock’s-happened future selves), the “hound” of this thought experiment could have been a pressure point for Sherlock, even though CAM would have had a different narrative reason for considering it so. (As for the seemingly careless wording [“Hounds of the Baskerville”], I’ve got a whole ‘nother meta brewing on that.)

~~~

And a final isn’t-that-interesting: Henry Knight, who spreads the word about the hound and is the reason Sherlock, John, and the public become interested in it, is played by Russell Tovey, one of Britain’s few openly gay actors.

Stop right there! and read this lengthy disclaimer: It’s unproductive and often harmful to look for too many parallels between actor and role (see: Amanda Abbington is not Mary Morstan! send no hate mail!), especially for something as personal as sexuality.  _Sherlock_ will not turn out to have done all its casting to make political statements about sexuality. There are multiple meanings in works of fiction. Many of these meanings are not conscious decisions by the creators.

But. If  _Sherlock_ does turn out to be a years-long conspiracy of hetero-baiting, it will be fascinating to hear about the experience of queer actors in the show, and who knew what when about the long game / TJLC.  _Until_ that happens and they choose to talk about it, I’ll avoid further real-person speculation like so much Grimpen Minefield.

And I’ll conduct thought experiments about the narrative instead. So: No hound?

No, hound.

But you don’t really have to make such an archaic distinction. It’s just  ~~ love~~ a dog.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Further thoughts. THoB makes so much more sense to me if it's a mystery _and_ an allegory about sexual orientation.

I cannot unsee “The Hounds of Baskerville” as an allegory about sexual orientation.

** Liberty In **

“Liberty” is a bit like “hound,” a slightly archaic word that catches the attention.

Liberty in… death? Indiana?

As well as in this lovely saying, “the watchword of Christian peacemakers”:

_ In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity. _

([source and discussion](http://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/essentials-unity-non-essentials-liberty-all-things/))

**The Acknowledgment**

Henry Knight’s experience of the hound sounds just like Gatiss’ experience with coming out to his parents.

Henry first saw the hound when it killed his father. He was haunted for years, and finally had to confront it again.

From a 2010 Gatiss interview in “The Guardian” (bold is mine):

> I dreaded coming out to my dad, but it was taken out of my hands by my mum. I told her I was gay and was ready to tell my dad, but she said:  **"Don’t, you’ll kill him."** So, I put it off for a bit, then about two weeks later she called me up and said mysteriously: “We’ve had snow! Oh, look, it’s only dad just come in the room,” which I took to mean she had told him. A year later, I realised that they had dealt with it by not dealing with it at all.  **I had to go through it all again** and confront them about my sexuality. There’s a lesson there, in terms of not putting things off.

([link](http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/oct/23/mark-gatiss-family-values))

**Bluebell, the Matchbox, and the Bisexual Glow**

The very next statement in the Guardian article is an example of bisexual erasure:

> I had a girlfriend before I ever had a boyfriend, but it was just a phase. I think a lot of people who say they are bisexual aren’t. I loved her dearly and we had a very nice time, but on the Kinsey scale, I would say I was always predominantly gay.

I want to highlight this because it’s important not to ignore it (not erase the erasure), and because it problematizes my next point. I humbly suggest that Gatiss’ views are likely more nuanced than this single quote, and that they evolve over time just like everybody’s.  


Gatiss wrote three novels about bisexual secret agent Lucifer Box, so the matchbox in TSoT’s Isadora Persano case that contained an unexplained glow (rather than ACD’s rare worm) is tempting as a reference to John’s bisexuality.

([loudest-subtext-in-television](http://tmblr.co/mq2kKq0covyqPKgID0Chnog) [post](http://loudest-subtext-in-television.tumblr.com/post/74556837280/re-the-glowing-matchbox-i-just-found-out-that-mark) about the matchbox)

Because, you know, [bisexuals are bioluminescent](http://snogandagrope.tumblr.com/post/71128699527/roane72-elenilote-rainbowdalek-part-two%20). (#bisexualfacts, borrowed from [snogandagrope](http://tmblr.co/mDsNdmm71ifws24Ip0AGReg))

Just like Bluebell the glowing rabbit. (Who, like the hound, “had to go” at this point in the story arc.)


End file.
